Who you going to believe, me or your own lying justice system?

That’s the response of the enraged editors of the Financial Review today to the remarkable abandonment of the prosecution case against the CFMEU’s John Setka and Shaun Reardon for blackmail. The Victorian DPP dropped the charges yesterday, after it became obvious from the committal hearing that the claims of Boral executives being threatened by Setka and Reardon had been invented a year after the meeting and heavily massaged by Boral’s lawyers.

The claims were gleefully seized on by Dyson Heydon and Jeremy Stoljar (remember him?) at the Trade Union Royal Commission, but subjected to not even the most basic scrutiny; if anything, the normally stone-faced Heydon showed an uncharacteristically simpering attitude to Boral executives during hearings. But when held to the basic rigour of a criminal trial process, the claims fell apart. And fast. The committal hearing hadn’t even finished taking evidence from Boral executives.

That didn’t stop the Fin’s editorial and Jennifer Hewett raging about the result and in effect rehashing the allegations. Hewett even peddled the easily debunked lie that the CFMEU has added significantly to construction costs.

The prosecution of Setka and Reardon wasn’t merely based on some clumsily confected notes by executives that didn’t withstand the mildest scrutiny. It represented a dramatic escalation of the government’s warfare on unionism. It was a criminal charge applied to industrial relations matters — something unheard of since the 19th century in Australia. There was no suggestion Setka and Reardon were — had they made the threats alleged — engaging in blackmail for personal gain; it was part of an industrial dispute. In that context, a successful prosecution would have meant any aggressive industrial disputation could be criminalised.

All this at a time when the days lost to industrial disputes in construction are far below the levels of the entire economy in the 1990s — and at a time when construction has below-average rates of wages growth.

The AFR can rail that the failed prosecution is some sort of miscarriage of justice, but the problem is that it’s only the latest collapse of a case arising from the Heydon extravaganza. Four earlier references for prosecution from Heydon were never proceeded with, or charges were dismissed. That includes the spectacular case of John Lomax, charged with blackmail only for the AFP not to produce any evidence against him despite a highly publicised arrest.

Another five references resulted in not guilty verdicts, “no case to answer” verdicts with costs awarded, or the matter being dropped entirely. That’s before you count the various problems with defective warrants obtained by police in several prosecutions, which also dogged the failed case against Setka and Reardon. All this for $46 million — plus how many more millions on ten failed prosecution referrals.

Meanwhile, construction continues to be the third most lethal industry for workers after transport and agriculture, with ten deaths already this year.

The relentless demonisation of the CFMEU by the Coalition and the AFR has a broader purpose: to tar all unions, but particularly unions that strongly stand up for their members, as in effect criminal organisations and illegitimate participants in Australian public life. Coalition-created institutions — a royal commission, the Registered Organisations Commission, the ABCC — are then specifically employed to attack them.

Meanwhile, over at the banking royal commission, the failure of an underfunded regulator to do anything about regular misconduct and criminality by the nation’s biggest and most influential companies is on regular display.